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Hilary Otto back next the poet Hilary Otto is an English poet based in Barcelona, where she reads regularly in both Spanish and English. Her work has featured in Ink, Sweat & Tears , Popshot , Black Bough Poetry , The Blue Nib and elsewhere. Hilary was longlisted for the Live Canon 2021 International Poetry Prize, and her first pamphlet, Zoetrope , will be published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2022 . the poems A dream of flying 00:00 / 01:54 At times the locust prefers to be alone. Until one day when it’s too hot, food is short and there are too many saw-clamp jaws scissoring shut. When those spiny hind legs rub together it all revs up. A sex switch flicks. They’re chock full of guaiacol, buzzing like a floor of clubbers, bingeing on lush leaves, fat grain. They get high on grazing, flush wheat-gold, and rise. In their striped masks, they terrorise the locals who cannot swat them in such numbers, can’t control the swirl and swarm. So many wings whirring in the corn, so many antennae waving in the furrows, weighing down the stalks until they split. Like remote-controlled drones they fly as one murky swathe, moving on the breeze in careless decimation. They gorge before the spray can settle, then flee long skies away, their wreckage strewn in hard and yellowing husks. Far from here, the upsurge will finally recede just as hormones do. Somewhere, among the stumps of a ravaged field a locust wakes alone, its head buzzing. It has no scent memory of this place, or its arrival here. All it remembers is a dream of flying across deep water, its mind heavy with gold. What the data about migration told me 00:00 / 01:01 We are incoming packets discrete, carrying our own context. Our aim is to pass through without being stored in a session. We choose the optimal path for delivery, clustering at the interface between nodes. When we encounter a closed path we redistribute, or use a broker for dispatch and settlement. The broker makes decisions based upon current demand. If the load is well-balanced we are outgoing, our movement is invisible to the receiver until we reach choke point we have not yet reached settlement we are asynchronous threads pooling we are stateless, but we persist Black star Scientists recently examining a victim of Vesuvius found that the extreme heat had turned his brain to glass. 00:00 / 01:09 This is no ordinary stain. Here lies a cluster of black stars, a spilling of ideas; the spectacle of dreams on fire. Inside this many-faceted mirror there is a man, exploding from his own head in a shower of thoughts. Vitrified, he shines, his secrets burned dark in the pit of a flame. This is birth itself smothered in sharp death. One catastrophic jewel spreads its brittle offering to Vulcan. Shards of energy cooked in the kiln of a skull are pressed cold across our consciousness in a bribe. This is what you could be, Death whispers. Look how beautiful you are! Publishing credits A dream of flying: The Blue Nib (Issue 44) What the data about migration told me: Ink, Sweat & Tears Black star: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Khalisa Rae back next the poet Khalisa Rae is a poet, activist and journalist in Durham, NC. Author of Real Girls Have Real Problems , she has poems in Frontier , Rust and Moth , Damaged Goods , Hellebore , Flypaper Lit , Sundog Lit , PANK and Luna Luna , among others. Khalisa has won several poetry prizes, and serves as founder of the Think and Ink BIPOC Collective, and the Women of Color Speak Reading series. Khalisa is also Writing Center Director at Shaw University. Her debut collection Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in April 2021. the poems Reclaiming our Phenomenal Bones For Maya 00:00 / 01:15 When did we lose our phenomenal? I think we left it on the back stoop, abandoned it like a baby on steps for anyone to pick up and call their own. I think we tucked it under our tongues, let it dissolve, and melt away. But the taste of it still lingers. I think we spread our phenomenal across beds, in the backs of cars where we opened it for anyone who said the magic word. I think we smeared it on countertops and couches, and made it like jam or a marmalade to lick off for satisfaction. But woman you have been phenomenal and everlasting since the beginning of time, since the Nile and cradle of civilization and Lucy. Your phenomenal bones are proof that you were once here. And breathing. And everything. Our brown bosoms have brought nations to their knees. Our open mouths have made even the most powerful cower. Our brick and mortar skin has always been a phenomenal destination—brown-stone thighs, hand-crafted cathedrals of a waist, sweltering temple lips, a museum of a mind, we will find our phenomenal when we stop looking and just be. Livestock 00:00 / 01:04 When they come for me, I am neither girl nor boy, I am neither clam nor cock. I have neither hooves nor snout. But I do have claws; I can grunt and growl and show my teeth. I do not need wings to create a windstorm, I do not need talons to break skin; I can snarl and scrape. I can unhinge my jaw to fit a head twice the size of mine inside. I can be razor-backed and spiked edge when he tries to skin me, to unscale my silvery back, debone my brazen hen-hide. I will be foul-mouthed and crooked-necked. I will be the chicken head they know me to be, if it will save my life. When he comes for me, I will remember the coop, how they gathered the fowl girl up by the feet with warm hands and cooing. How her brown hung low when they entered her into the guillotine and severed her head. How they plucked her body until it was bare. I will remember the blood and what happens when they want to make you food. Belly-Full of Gospel 00:00 / 01:09 Each morning my grandmother rises to find her Bible still breathing, belting her favorite aria. A lion, a well, a sacrifice. Crack-of-dawn, coffee-stained, scrolls making music at 6am. Each page turn a chord she knows better than hot water cornbread and collard greens. Wailing Blessed Assurance , What a Friend to crackling bacon— all a belly-full of gospel summoning spirit to be there in the midst. Her back buckle and hand wave awaken a holy ghost— Bash-sha- Shadrach, Meshach- tongue-speaking spells cast out the demons haunting this old house. 'While I’m on this tedious journey'— a sovereign song soothing her aching, calligraphed hands. Walk with Me , she asks, inviting Him in the room. What a meditation, a ritual to welcome Holy in a place held together by broken bread. A sacred invitation to dine with her and the browning hash. Nothing but the Blood and sunrise slicing sound— stirring a tent revival lasting till nightfall across her wobbling kitchen table. Publishing credits Reclaiming our Phenomenal Bones: Homology Lit. Livestock: Flypaper Lit Belly-Full of Gospel: Sundog Lit S h a r e

Mims Sully back next the poet Nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, Mims Sully is a poet from Sussex, England. She was a winner of the Visual Verse Autumn Writing Prize 2022 , and has had her work published in Prole , Ink, Sweat & Tears , The Ekphrastic Review , And Other Poems , Obsessed with Pipework and other journals, as well as in anthologies by Sidhe Press and Black Bough Poetry. Mims started writing poetry after studying Creative Writing at the Open University, and many of her poems are inspired by her experience of caring for her mother, who had dementia. the poems Simple Hex For A Slanderer 00:00 / 00:51 Write their name on a piece of paper. Put it through the shredder. Place the ribbons in a bowl. Ignite. Watch them grow tongues, curl back and blacken, flaking to ash. File your nails (the sharper the better) then clip the tips, sprinkle over. Add some callus freshly grated by pumice, a crust of wax picked from your ear and one salty tear. Lubricate the mix with your own spit and lashings of mucus then stir and speak: Unkind words will not go unpunished but form ulcers yellow and bulbous tight with pus on the tongue. My Father’s Belt 00:00 / 01:00 looped around my waist, moves when I breathe like a phantom limb. The leather cracks, moves when I breathe. With bronze lustre the leather cracks as if with laughter. With bronze lustre, his face creased as if with laughter as disease spread. His face creased, a shifting of skin, as disease spread its tightening belt. A shifting of skin drawn across bone like a tightening belt; his body buckled. Drawn across bone this broad strap buckles my body with a strong clasp. This broad strap holds me together with a strong clasp like my father's arm. Holding me together; like a phantom limb my father's arm loops around my waist. Afternoon Entertainment, Chamberlain Court 00:00 / 00:58 I wasn’t sure at first if she was even listening, though we sat in rows in front of the baby grand, as the piano man played all the old classics. It was when she closed her eyes that it happened – her hands started patting her jeans in time to Over the Rainbow. Then her fingers stood to attention, as if remembering: the coolness of ivory, warmth of wood, weight of black and white keys. She leant into the music as her right hand rippled across her lap onto my leggings, while her left hammered chords on the neighbouring gentleman’s knees. And just when I thought I should intervene, she opened her mouth and sang at the top of her voice about a blue-skied cloudless world where someday, I might find her. Publishing credits Simple Hex for a Slanderer: Prole (Issue No. 27) My Father's Belt: Pulp Poets Press (March 1st 2021) Afternoon Entertainment, Chamberlain Court: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Dominic Leonard back next the poet Dominic Leonard’s writing can be found in PN Review , Poetry London , the TLS , Pain and elsewhere, with two of his poems featuring in the spring edition of The Poetry Review . In 2019, he received an Eric Gregory Award. His pamphlet, Antimasque , will be published by Broken Sleep Books in 2021. He lives and teaches in London. the poems Seven Birds Passed Through a Great Building 00:00 / 01:00 Seven birds passed through A great building—I cannot Remember you always but I have been finding ways to Remember you enough. I have Loved only from a safe distance, Staring into sinks long enough To know the sense of spillage That comes with every act of Honesty. Seven birds passed Through a house of spectacle Through the light that lounged Around each of the great stupid Bells and I thought about how Profound it felt, hands thick And heavy on my stupid knees. When I say that once I dreamt You were a taxi on fire plunging Down every country road in England I am not being facetious I am testing my immensity. I am trying to manage my fear, Which is to say I cannot risk Heaven, or any attempt at heaven I Have made so far, not when each Line I find is a room gone dark just As I leave it and always the birds are Flown and I’ve missed it just, just. What is the wind, what is it After Gertrude Stein 00:00 / 00:53 An egg – lithe beast that could crack with any pressure, That gets yellower towards its centre, that hangs between The fingers. A ghost-vision, serenely bovine. Incubated, Stratified. A correct language of where it was, where it Went, how are we anchored by it. But, to wander with it – How the wind knocks my ham-fisted breath from me, Makes a pelt of it. And wedged is the wind, trickling Into and out of all my little compartments and rooms, A fawn in a field seen blurred through the rain at nearly Seven in the evening after stumbling from the house. Something to consider when deciding on materials to Rebuild the world from after testing its capacity for grief, Which is all this was. On forgetting the anniversary of a death 00:00 / 00:13 If that’s you hearing – out on the roof, astride your miscreant echo – you made this of me, didn’t you. Publishing credits Seven Birds Passed Through a Great Building / On forgetting the anniversary of a death: exclusive first publication by iamb What is the wind, what is it: Stand (Issue 223, Volume 17 No. 3) S h a r e

wave nineteen autumn 2024 Christopher Arksey Corinna Board Frances Boyle Julie Stevens Kerry Darbishire Laura Theis Lewis Wyn Davies Louise Longson Marc Alan Di Martino Michele Grieve Nicholas McGaughey Oormila V Prahlad Rhona Greene Suyin Du Bois Tom Bailey

Catrice Greer back next the poet Baltimore-based writer Catrice Greer is a 2021 nominee for The Pushcart Prize who spent November 2020 serving as a Poet-In-Residence for the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Catrice has been published in several local publications and online journals, as well as in an international anthology. She's currently a Guest Editor for IceFloe Press, and Guest Poetry reviewer for Fevers of the Mind. the poems Cortical Cartography 00:00 / 01:54 I give thanks for you bravely doing this again traveling synapse by synapse trails of electric pulses jumping blackhole gaps that used to remember holding the dead space a new soma body birthing from bleating darkness show us the nucleus the middles of what we were made of Axons spread like kamikaze flying squirrel bodies with arms akimbo reaching dendrites touching Grateful for even this axon potential sometimes on sometimes off Praise for brave synaptic dives and jumps Grateful for re-birthed myelin insulating protecting making sure that we traffic on our way by the quickest route charged in this dark matter discovery-space This astronomy building anew, wrinkled city of light, crevices, crannies, gyri and sulci, ridges and valleys jellied, crinkled mass sectioned by lobes all speaking trillions simultaneous synaptic voices prayerfully all at once this chatter mines the neuronal network and we build a whole new world I Am Home 00:00 / 02:20 Lost you Early November When the leaves started falling And time faded backward Sitting here crocheting Stitching memories one loop at a time Your voice in my head swirling Humming a hymn, your favorite And I sing each note yearning, solemn As if you’d appear suddenly solo into a duet and we raise our voices as high as you ascended when it was time For you to be called home I rock quietly ashen stilted lone tree Swaying In a wood still lush knowing I sit with a pain I can barely speak the name awash with memories of you and the absent space we called your chair, dresser, your place at the table the place we used to go every Friday, your touch, your smile beaming a side-eye on an inside joke between us, The memory that had your name all over it that our family can’t tell anymore without crying, laughing, wishing you here And one day I will see your face again We will see you Feel you As your spirit is so close in the air here near me Near us vibrating in the humming I believe I can feel you We will never forget you A whisper softly tells me: 'I am home' The Gathering 00:00 / 03:14 Hear ye, hear ye We are gathered here today family, friends, enemies, enemies of my enemies We are here at the black hole mouth of this isolated cave in the grief painted infected unknown space to bury our dead among us Those dead things between us that hold us back Those things we no longer speak Those things that twine and whip round our vocal chords that prevent the i’m sorries i miss yous, i love yous the pieces that bumble forward like an emotionally blind man heady on drink bumbling home too late for whatever he was meant to be there for knocking over sentimentals, and traditions, passed down collectibles shattered in pieces launched jagged landmine shards speckling the ground Our DNA, our ancestors, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers long gone our creators ask us to stand here together Ask ourselves if in this space we will abandon Our old skins Our old breath and choose to share anew Can we bury this dead thing between us all so we can stand wrapped in sinew, tendons, blood¹ coursing miracles spiraling through the breath lifting us in a swirl of meditative purpose Can we find a new space a sense of being We are here in this vortex to bury the living dead under loam, clay, rocks, into the broken soil Cover it. Mark it as resting here never to go forward We mark new paths with a sign here as we crawl out heel to heel ... 6ft apart linked in spirit life begins anew we celebrate together mourning yesterdays embracing our multicolored confettied I forgive yous, littered in the air, celebrating our tomorrows ¹ Ezekiel 37:8 — King James Version: 'And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.' Publishing credits Cortical Cartography: Silver Spring Town Center Newsletter (Ancestral Voices 2020) I Am Home: Afro-American Newspaper (Baltimore Edition) The Gathering: first published under the title Elegy in the Silver Spring Town Center Newsletter (Vol. 8, Issue 9) S h a r e

Mariam Saeed Khan back next the poet Mariam Saeed Khan is a poet, writer, journalist and digital storyteller. Her poems have appeared in Pandemonium Journal and Daily Times , and she’s given a masterclass as guest speaker on The Desi Collective (The Writers' Block Party) , as well on Virtual Camp PK. Mariam was featured on Badass.gal as part of a Young Creative Council UK project marking International Women’s Day. She also appeared alongside other international poets in read poetry ’s National Poetry Month video, ‘What does poetry mean to you?’ In December 2020, Mariam took part in Columbia University School of the Arts' Digital Storytelling Lab Program. She is currently at work on her debut collection. the poems Skyline and Sealed Envelope 00:00 / 01:19 Packed the stars in an envelope. Stamped and left it at the lamp post. Just like a message in the bottle. Unlearned all that I learnt. Waiting to relearn in the sealed envelope, of what was said and not. The symphony skyline had my Nani’s heart of her yaadein – that’s what we say to our memories in Urdu. It gives us apaniat – that she’s still here. I never got to say her my final goodbye. For it was too sudden – death is. The last of my mother’s legacy from family tree. For whatever was, is gone. The last candle to blow; like the airport’s last airplane that left without one passenger. That missed the flight and the silence of it, within the terminal. I closed my eyes. Listening to my heart beat and thinking, the souls might be on the other side, floating in the times to come. When we least expect, they might show up in our unconscious sleeping zone. Turtle and Frog 00:00 / 02:38 Look at how far you have come. From oceans, beside the chamber of passages. From hells, where the fire burnt in the forest. When all else went north; a cup of tea, biscuits, and a melody of silences in our conversation was all the solace. I referred to us as, 'Turtle and Frog'; as once, I mistakenly brought a turtle instead of a frog because the green makes it everything serene. The hand of God with the fragile times, took you along the way. He heard you praying in the drawings of hidden tales of unspoken words. Your faith kept the journey. Struggling, healing, dying and fighting to keep alive. I heard you saying in a distant miles away in a dream: 'Your trials are not stronger than you. You outlast them anyway.' Who held her home and made it alive? The Divine rhythm rewired in our lives and friendships. In the cushion of surprises and birthdays, graduations and your wedding bells. With the acceptance, to stand up front and to kick the football when is the time to do so. After all, a wasted kick is a missed chance. So why not let the turtle save that and use it later. After all, the frog jumped from one leaf to another. Looking back to see where the turtle is now. We may be circling in stories of different eras and phases; but our eyes speak, whenever we talk and communicate in unsaid times. People talk about everything except the friendships that live it up too – but as with everything, they too need water and supply of trust, love and humanity. All in all, the turtle and frog took a detour under that tree of a ground that had the auditoriums next to it. To be asked, 'Till we meet again.' For no one is one man army and there is a backstory; times and hourglass of the comforting fire that keeps the cold away. I smiled and narrated this tale of friendship and sisterhood to my niece when asked to talk about, 'Once upon a time' – and here we are still going. Snowflakes and Cotton Candy 00:00 / 01:47 The one thing that our poets have been writing since eternity? Love. A four-letter word that got a universe within. But each coating of it, looks different on an individual. The sky gets its meaning from moods of our selves; whether we know it or not, the colors changes with time; our feelings flip over like dripping sound. Sometimes it is blue, other times very whitish and red-orangish. Yet, it is what it is – a ceiling full of bulbs with snowflakes. Over a long period of distance, it keeps us alive. It doesn’t make us homeless even without any home. I stretch my hand and watch the palm lines. Wondering where’s the line of cotton candy in it? Would the life experiences all about baggage of fluffy memories that one leaves in past? I put my hand over my other hand, the small cottage that makes the sweet candies is at work. Love is what the inner thermostat of the person is. Which is why some bridges leave you; other cross you by. While the rest are stationed in the mighty mountains, with its inner calling. Now I skateboard with the walls that got no name. A pattern of ladders is a mystery. Between the valleys, there lies within, me and you. The world was asleep. And we were just getting our first snow of the season. For me, that is love. Publishing credits All poems: written exclusively for iamb S h a r e

Victoria Punch © Erika Benjamin back next the poet Voice coach and musician Victoria Punch is curious about voice and identity, the limits of language, and how we perceive things. She has had her work published in Poetry Magazine , Mslexia, Magma and One Hand Clapping – as well as in Christmas Stories: Twelve Poems to Tell and Share . the poems A cold striding 00:00 / 00:54 Bridled with ferns in April, a year uncurled. Up – yet feeling low on the blue fuzz of new rain – the brush of a wing on the eave The earth, it seems, has turned on the warming drawer and laid the plates inside, crockery carrots and cucumber, cutlery laid in lines and rows, potatoes, peas and purple sprouting broccoli babies The earth rises like dough. Proven, prickling with spring, the lick of blackberries prophesied, the implacable hedge, laden with strings of wildflower childlings, seeded by flight, small mice and hiding birds, a little shy I’m asking, but I can’t recall the question in the face of the morning an ode to the unexpected find 00:00 / 01:08 I marvel. oh my, oh you – small lime green lurker how did you – damp smirker – get there. armpitted and puckering gloop grip in my top sneak under my collar your squeaky sneaky ways and hazy origins amaze me you have umami, by the look of you tang of salt on my tongue, you tiny appetiser, so phlegmatic, enigmatic part of my one point five daily litres of mucusy nasal secretions little air crumb catcher, dust, dirt and pollen snatcher, crunchy bacteria beguiler you are crisper as you dry your quasi-spherically makes me queasy, I quease I am uneased by your tacky feel, your unexpected gloop your roundness – rolled who rolled you, oh green one? wherefore and what nose did you come from? oh how I’d like to know or maybe (s)not Last Flight on the Road 00:00 / 01:54 that morning – stung by cold blankets on and steam-breath in the air low motor hum of the old car, road ticker-taped and on for miles grey and dim in the husky half-light sidled by the frosted trees thick as thieves the trees stood, still and stoic, lime-cold leaning on the morning light that came in waves upon the air replicating pine for miles they lined the open, empty road we made our way along the road surrounded by the stream of trees counting down the miles and miles curled and hunched against the cold hats and coats and frosty air looking for the early light his silence was a kind of light he joined our vigil down the road cut through the still and lingering air the owl came softly through the trees I held my coffee long gone cold and I forgot about the miles I felt he stayed with us for miles orange wingtips in the light his face was braced against the cold level with my eyes, along the road he slipped like water past the trees gold and russet on the air I held his presence in the air carried it for miles and miles wings the colour of the trees wings the colour of the light eyes held fast along the road I forgot that I was cold his face – the air, his wings – the light I sat for miles in silence on the road I watched the passing trees and felt the cold Publishing credits an ode to the unexpected find: Invitation to Love – Issue 3 (the6ress) A cold striding: Magma (No. 85) Last Flight on the Road: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Adam Cairns back next the poet Based in South Wales, Adam Cairns is a poet and a photographer whose poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies including Green Ink Poetry , Poetry Wales and The Ekphrastic Review . He's currently studying for an MA in Poetry Writing with the Poetry School and Newcastle University, and runs poetry workshops for the RSPB at the Newport Wetlands Centre. the poems Archaic 00:00 / 01:31 My sister calls, says there's something she's found I need to see— can a wound be buried in the blood could a faint trace of the trench he died in linger, ramped into an impression— a patch of green barley the farmer leaves— she shows me the album, the whole brown and white of him— dark eyes boring through the century between us, that ridge above his nose, familiar—I take the photo to a mirror, hold it up looking back at myself. I tuck the photo in my pocket, climb up Gray Hill to find where the forest crouches, my home hidden in the play of hills and there, beyond the frown lines of spruce, the moraine of stumps, a first go at bracken, I see they have planted trees, row after row of plastic-wrapped saplings shining in cold air, white as graves at Neuve-Chapelle each casting a small shadow—and looking back, the path ducks inside the shelter of archaic trees, the last of the sky going out my visible breath, the ghost of everyone there. Last year the apple tree smouldered 00:00 / 00:52 hidden wires from its roots charging limbs with sparks of blossom. All summer bees droned in sheaths of nectar and we leant together in deckchairs dozing. But this year came a cold spring and though frail blossoms opened a promise of coupling and sap within the flex of boughs surged in traceries of twigs the flowering failed. After you left ice sugared every petal with a touch of death so there are few fruit this autumn the tree alone with its leaves stalling. Only last summer there was still time for everything Balloon 00:00 / 00:46 sadness sweeps the boundary clear— lines of impeccable spruce a touch of sharpness in beech and ash— an old man I saw fifteen years ahead all this loneliness shadowing me the clatter of family I gave away easily a balloon wind-snatched from my five-year-old hand floating off and unable to trace a route back to my hand letting go the crumpled gaudy tin-foil of what we had collapses all the air inside long since voided Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Lauren Thomas back next the poet An MA student in Poetry Writing with Newcastle University at The Poetry School, London, Lauren Thomas has had work in various print and online publications. Her poems have appeared in Nine Pens' Hair Raising Anthology , Black Bough Poetry's second Christmas/Winter anthology , and most recently, in Lighthouse Journal and Magma . Lauren's pamphlet, Silver Hare Tales , was published in 2021. the poems Garden’s End 00:00 / 01:02 Once I found a fallen body under leaves, beneath the pear, kneeling at the garden’s end with others in the dark. I’d always feared those shadow trees, the tenet of their bark, their hard rust fruit with nothing but the pull and barb of wasps and browning apples bruised and thick with slugs. I shifted on the ancient moss, regarded the sharp ends of grass. Her wings were spread as if to touch the purple edges of this place. Eyelids closed, her slowing breath, holding less than songs. I put her in a cardboard box offered up the vivid pink umbilic twists of worms. Murmured drops of milk as words, whispered less than prayers. Far away my mother’s voice, was calling to the garden’s end. I thought of salvaging our lost and sunlight trapped inside green glass. Ysbyty Ifan 00:00 / 01:17 Ancient backcloth upland moor, shifting with the currents of a restless wind Beneath quiver-grass parched runnels, lie brass rubbings potted into ground A bronze-agronomist cured and historied within the glug and clag of peatland bog His green shallow-pool whispers flow through leather bones, chambered underground Iterations rotted into earthtongues, gills and seeds. A carbon keep, embogged We patch the purple-orange hummocks so that muddied river crossings can rewind Time speckles gold upon the Plover, returns Whorl-Snails and sculpts the bog Back to ewer. Stagnant moss births fruiting bodies, rafting spinner silk enwinds With Sundews trapping raptors, feeding rooting bonnets. This is when the earth regrounds Upland bog. Oxidised Pitkins pink the wind. History sings through the quenched ground L'Origine Du Monde After Zena Assi 00:00 / 01:00 We found her floating in a stream folded like an origamied boat: a woman made of paper. Her closed eyes did not reveal the truth — her green roots trailing anchors in the red-rushed water. We thought she had been left for dead after they had picked her up and sewed her shut to stop the sound of sea. We lay her flooded body underneath a weeping tree, casting light upon a bird cage hanging there in homage to her bones. Cold wet fingers flayed her printed skin like peeling robes from a drowned daughter like lifting memory from stone. We gazed at her beauty, peered inside to see how she was made. Her catacombs all glittering and lined with live grenades. Publishing credits Garden's End: Silver Hare Tales (Blood Moon Poetry) Ysbyty Ifan: Magma (Issue 81 – Anthropocene) L’Origine Du Monde: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Rachel Deering back next the poet Poet Rachel Deering lives in Bath, England, with her cat, and works in the field of mental health supporting those who are homeless. She has a love of the natural world and what it can tell us about ourselves. Rachel is a director of writing website ABC Tales – where she also shares her own new poetry under username onemorething . She supports Signe Maene with Book Worm Saturday on Twitter, and can also be found tweeting poetry, art, nature, myth, folklore plus photos of her cat from her own account. Her first poetry collection is Crown of Eggshells . the poems Crow 00:00 / 01:07 My heart is a crow, its wingbeats, a pulse; the doctor declared it a medical impossibility, but these pills are seeds, I said, and this hospital bed, the black earth. Krähe, I called it – its name, the bark of its sound, ‘yes,’ I lie, ‘yes, every morning now seems to be a bright welcome to life.’ I am used to saying yes. In laboratories, crows have demonstrated their magic – this is how I wield stone to make water, this is how I bend metal to make food. A doctor diagnoses, and I try to hush the night sung inside my chest, of battles and their fields of dead, I do not tell anyone ‘no’, I understand cras, I understand how to endure today for the liberty of tomorrow. The Dead Want Their Moon Back 00:00 / 00:55 The toad winked an eye into the side of his head, unrolled his tongue and snatchgulped slippery the lozenge of a slug. The darkness said – do not steal the moon or the dead will find you and fetch it back, their pearly stone, their lifeless rock. Dew settled upon the toad’s cratered back, the seas no longer ebbed and flowed, owls were struck dumb. I weighed the night on the scales of absence until nothing was or ever could be marvellous anymore, I cut the moon into new quarters, I buried the light. Salamander 00:00 / 01:32 When it rained, you blamed me, and when your cattle died or the well gave up bad water – it was all my doing. So much so, that now you do not speak my name, fearing its mustard breath will flame a pouched poison and released, will fire and hiss if uttered. But I have never been that mysterious. Still, I speak in little clicks, undaunted, mutter the meaning of each star upon my back, upon the worm of my body. And I swim in the murk of aquatic dreams, sinewy, watered beneath the smell of pinewood warmed in the sun. Here, you ask me to put out the blaze I started and yet, I only know the cool of wet and stone. I think of the soft, round of my eggs, sticky as creamy mistletoe berries, and what if I could change my skin, regenerate the broken parts, so that when, scales falling away, I can reveal the white dove of my virtue, and how then, maybe then, you might again see the truth of me. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Jinny Fisher back next the poet Before writing poetry, Jinny Fisher was a classical violinist, a teacher, and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Her poems have since appeared in Lighthouse, Against the Grain , The Interpreter’s House , Under the Radar , Tears in the Fence , Prole , Ink, Sweat & Tears and Osmosis . Jinny's writing has been commended and placed in national and international competitions. She was first runner-up in The Interpreter’s House Open House Competition in 2016, as well as in Prole Laureate in 2020. Jinny also runs the Poetry Pram: taking poetry to audiences at festivals for random one-to-one readings. Her pamphlet, The Escapologist , was out in 2019. the poems Privilege 00:00 / 01:25 Aged eight, my brother walks through the cathedral school’s stone doorway. He is assigned a number, to mark with indelible ink inside his shoes. He is taught only by men who have been taught only by men. Big boys creep to the beds of shaking small boys, who wake in cold, damp sheets. Masters walk pretty boys upstairs, for personal attention, special education. * But my brother can pitch a note, so is chosen to be an apprentice chorister, learning melody and polyphony from the boys around him. Cantoris and Decani , the Cathedral choir stalls become his refuge; his friends are animal misericords under ancient polished seats. He floats to the rhythm of versicle and response, to refrains of psalms and canticles that swirl up to the fan vaulted Sanctuary ceiling. Praetorius, Tallis, Purcell—their anthems shall cradle and comfort him always. And in peace he shall both lie down and sleep. Retrofocus 00:00 / 01:32 Brownie 127: The Beach. As we skimmed the deeps, his freckled back was my boat. I felt the rise and fall of shoulder blades under my thumbs, his mouth swivelling into view as he gasped for breath. Look: a squinty grin, a cartwheel, a sandcastle – fortified against the tide. Asahi Pentax: The Shed. Dust-coated cobwebs, thick as tea towels, draped the windows. I dangled my legs from the workbench, viced the battens while he sawed, and there were so many splinters to be gouged. Look: a table – sanded and glossed, a captain’s chair, three splay-backs. Nikon F: The Studio. A windowless shed at the end of the garden. Only my friend was with him. We all knew there were cameras on tripods, banks of flash-guns, umbrellas to diffuse the glare. I imagine his camouflaged murmurs as her blouse falls to the floor. Listen: Lovely – peep from under your lids. Now – a little smile? Little Brother, Big Sister 00:00 / 00:38 At the back of Deb’s wardrobe, Dan finds the frock: pink satin frills, unicorns, fairies— soon to be sent to the charity shop. Grandma’s beads from the dressing-up box set off the shine in his wavy blond hair. His unisex trainers match Deb’s rainbow socks. Dan poses and pouts to the full-length mirror, catwalks into the kitchen with a shrill ta-da! Father’s eyes roll. He storms out, slams the door. Publishing credits Privilege / Little Brother, Big Sister: exclusive first publication by iamb Retrofocus: The Escapologist (V. Press) S h a r e

David Pecotić back next the poet Born a poet nearly five decades ago, David Pecotić has had many adventures in the years between then and now: as seeker after truth, academic, partner, public servant, father and counsellor. Recently, tragedy reawoke in David a need to express himself in poetry. His poems have so far appeared in the Australian Poetry Collaboration and The Canberra Times . David lives in Australia, where he's in a complicated relationship with his daimon. the poems There are Days You Cross Hunted 00:00 / 01:08 There are days you cross hunted in rivers, shaded and breezed. Foot after sucked foot, this little can be a lot if it’s yours in the solid dark. Where you stand, others barely there move slightly unseen and you see to live is to live around yourself closer and finer and doesn’t take the eyes in a face. Where they narrow, they blow in. Where they long, they draw out. Such small round things slip through the net strings. Even at the last strung at the estuary’s edge. Inheritance 00:00 / 02:00 Out of time, I am become what I was: a fisherman off & on a black goddess island, where the fish that make dreams school their poison. Back on shore, I tell the bees the names of every gutted vision earned. A million glass wings beat sweetness in return. Further inland, I am the goat man, hoofed hard-on chasing every woody piece of arse, even my own. Up on the mountain, I’m his father, equally erect but frozen, the holy thief whose hungry mouth made the music. A dead ringer for shades who wings for tricks. Only in the forest dark can I reach down my throat to pull myself out, a vukodlach , wolf-skin turned inside-out, drum-like and ruddy. Village monster I kept down for so long, I had cut my hams, pricked my whole body with pins to prevent this: I cannot pretend after this operation I won’t walk about forcing your submission. Strigun —human by day, demon by night; held in check by my krsnik : the warlock gift with his hawthorn stick, that takes away, gives peace by piercing, the heart again. Hoarfrost Future 00:00 / 01:02 Winter is always colder half-broken— the frost bleeds out as a sacrifice to what comes. Today is as hard and cold, sparkling a sharp wet razor. So many melting facets, so much hoarfrost future. Glass candy hard on a ground we can’t feel getting warmer, so subtle the seasoning. I flow out the same, rhyming the solid ebb-tide— wounded words and eyes swallow unsatiated spongey beds of loved leaves. What does the sun-warmed wind mean to their delicate rise and fall? They tell me to my autumn and spring I don’t owe anything at all. Publishing credits There are Days You Cross Hunted: Australian Poetry Collaboration (Issue 34) Inheritance: Australian Poetry Collaboration (Issue 30) Hoarfrost Future: The Canberra Times (February 2021) S h a r e

Charlotte Oliver back next the poet Charlotte Oliver lives in Yorkshire. She's had poetry commissions from the BBC, as well as from Scarborough’s South Cliff Gardens Restoration Project. Her work has appeared in various publications including Dream Catcher, Green Teeth, Ice Floe, Black Bough Poetry, Cape, Spelt and Fevers of the Mind . Charlotte's debut chapbook, How To Be A Dressing Gown , was published by Dreich Chapbooks, and she's currently working on a radio ballad funded by Arts Council England. the poems How To Be a Dressing Gown 00:00 / 01:11 Your role is that of a hug in clothing form, you must channel the softness of a lullaby and the gentleness of true love. And, of course, have big pockets with a tissue inside. A valuable source of warmth you must be a mobile retreat in times of illness, heartbreak, a good Saturday book after a hard week or a crisp Christmas morning. Be always ready, lurk in unexpected places (the bathroom floor? the dining room? Monday lunchtime?) and your greatest gift: the trump card the un-ignorable siren to the world and uninvited visitors at the door, that the wearer is OFF DUTY and no questions can be asked (but this must only be used in extremis or its force will fade). You have the power of an unexpected sponge pudding with custard but stay humble and keep yourself together – lose your belt and you will probably become dusters. Nothing Happens But Everything Happens 00:00 / 00:40 Like the imperceptible inhalations of rising bread. Like bare soil in winter. Like Mondays in Lockdown when the earth scrapes round with grief. Like when I cook dinner, everyday. Like a feeling you didn’t ask for. Like a yes or a no. Like the silence when you ask if they’re okay and the words in their throat crumple up like a paper straw sucked too hard and you can’t straighten it out for them. Hope 00:00 / 00:45 I want the belief of an ant with a giant leaf, of the Alsatian that escorts its owner down the street, of a herring gull leaving land behind, of a wasp. I don’t remember what it used to be like, just the clatter of freedom like waves on a pebbled shore, and eternity’s breath on my bare neck. I don’t remember how it felt just the early taste of you – fresh water from a quiet stream. I don’t remember much except the view that embraced me from all directions: a thousand greens, stitched together with hope. Publishing credits All poems: How To Be A Dressing Gown (Dreich Chapbooks) S h a r e

JC Niala back next the poet JC Niala’s poetry is influenced by her relationship with the land of the two countries in which she dwells: England and Kenya. She spent the growing season of 2021 recreating a 1918-style English allotment on a site at Oxford as a living memorial to the 1918-1919 pandemic, and to those who served in the First World War. Poems written as part of that project will be published by Fig under the title, Portal . the poems Brood 00:00 / 01:44 You were the odd amongst the keets. The one, who would as I nursed Okelo fall off the earthenware pot-turned-perch by the confusion of black and white spotted siblings on my mother’s veranda. And I did not name you. It was enough that you would not be eaten by my family at least but learn to forage and like a seamstress pick out dudus, from the fabric of soul underneath the bombax and bottlebrush trees. The overhanging roof descended to cocoon us, Okelo at my breast, born on the same morning you all hatched. You who would not be contained. Your bright chirps would unveil my mornings when still wrecked by broken sleep I would slip along, slowly to the outside and listen to the sound of Okelo’s suckles amidst your birdsong she would later mimic and sing, as she toddled on the silken sandpit near where I lunched, while she snoozed. The day you were taken Your mother, would have I am sure, uttered the same warning as when she pecked you back into line. Stay close. Do not go into the open green space. but you strayed and into the talons of Kite so swift you, your mother or I were caught on a breath and did not cry out. We watched you reduced to a cluster of feathers, picked clean. The mobile’s shadow hovered over Okelo’s cot. Okelo stirred, I leapt for her. Sprawl 00:00 / 00:30 Watch me grow. I suck it all in to feed the giant. Out of a swamp I rose like Omweri, Squeezed through poorly laid pavement. Still, I welcome those rich enough And those who put them up. Boundaries vanish. I swallow whole suburbs, kijijis. People forget that I once wasn’t here. Changes 00:00 / 01:11 Insects still tell the seasons here. Dusk, when the cicadas, an environmental tinnitus, obliterate thought with continuous sound soften into a lullaby above which the chorus of bullfrogs arise in a vibrato echo and then fall. Call and response, that talking drummers once imitated across the savannah. Beating out news on carved hollow trees skins tightened over cut trunks to produce sound. Messages that carried over lifetimes until they were dulled by walls of concrete that rise from swampy plains to bring Development. Now, ringtones cut through the night air like a panga shearing elephant grass. Yet just beneath the fired earth, red ants, termites crawl along their regurgitated tunnels up and down and through every building’s crack, dashed lines, urgency on parchment, an invisible shelter-trail to inside where I listen for the smell of rain. Publishing credits Brood: The Lamp Journal (September 2016) Sprawl: peripheries: a journal of word and Image (No. 4) Changes: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e